Pick yer' Jesus, beware of competition

[TheistusMaximus]

Here is one particularly interesting (though rather old) article by J.P. Holding regarding the plethora of different Jesus theories;

www.tektonics.org/lp/pickyourjesus.html

The list is either extremely depressing or just really funny:

- He didn't exist; he was a figment or partial figment derived from pagan religions (Acharya S, G. A. Wells, early) or from Jewish Wisdom figures (Wells, later) or from Platonism (Doherty) or Egyptian monuments (Wallack) or by the Piso family (Reuchlin)
- He existed but was displaced in time by the church (Relivo Oliver, Ellegard)
- He was the literalization of an initiation symbol in Gnostic mystery rites (Freke and Gandy)
- He was just some average Joe God picked out (adoptionism)
- A magician and a homosexual (Morton Smith)
- One of many manifestations of God (New Agers, Bahais)
- A faker who conspired to seem to be Messiah (Schoenfield)
- A mentally imbalanced person with delusions of identity (Elst)
- The archangel Michael (JWs)
- Spirit brother of Lucifer (Mormons)
- The symbolic representative of the Christ Self (E. C. Prophet)
- A black man (Rastafarianism)
- An Irish priest (Ku Klux Klan)
- A cynic sage (Crossan, Mack)
- An Essene preacher (Thiering)
- A product of rape (Schaberg)
- An Arabian in the fifth century BC (Salibi)
- A pacifist (Nelson-Pallmyer)
- A preacher to whom were applied Gnostic Redeemer myths (Bultmann)
- A spirit-possessed healer and exorcist (Davies)
- Founder of an elaborate psycho-conspiratorial movement (Edmund Cohen)
- A rabbi who suffered psychological trauma (Chilton)
- The founder of the "Holy Grail" bloodline with Mary Magdelene (Baigent and Leigh)
- The soul of Elvis Presley, the true Messiah (Yes -- believe it)
- An advocate of New Age Gnosticism (the Aquarian Gospel)
- A symbol of perfection (Thurman)
- A wealthy man (Kenneth Copeland)
- A sacred mushroom (Allegro)
- A violator of the Jewish law (Yosef)
- A son of God that Satan has imitated (Harrington)
- A Freemason (Hiram Key)
- A Rosicrucian (the Rosicrucians)
- An advocate of racial unity (Lamsa)
- An advocate of religious tolerance (Moore)
- Antidote to Homer's Ulysses (MacDonald)
- Son of an alien (McPherson, Rael)
- A nasty moron and an idiot (Tulbure)
- An advocate of vegetarianism and kindness to animals (Ouseley, Gospel of the Holy Twelve, PETA)
- Nobody, really, he was more like a standup comedian (Jesus Seminar)
- A rebel who assembled a large force and occupied the Temple (Carmichael)
- A teacher that the high priest actually cared deeply about (Cohen)
- An advocate of reincarnation who thereby offended the establishment
- A mask of the Father (Oneness Pentacostals)
- An advocate of the feminized divine (Brown, DaVinci Code)
- A hero who was hung on a real tree, later changed to a cross (Sheaffer)
- A prophet who was not crucified, but replaced on the cross (Muslim apologists)
- A faker who survived the cross and went to India, or Japan, or Tibet (various New Agers) or just hung around until he died of old age (Turner)
- One of 330,000 gods, or an avatar of Vishnu (Hinduism
- A promoter of the "true self" (Buddhism)
- Pope Gregory (New Chronology by Anatoly Timofeevich Fomenko, that posits (among other things), that our current chronology of history is way off, and that Ancient Rome, Greece, and Egypt were crafted during the Rensaissance by humanists and clergy).

Anyone to provide an addendum

[sandwiches]

Vermes, Fredriksen, Sanders etc etc ?

www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html#fredriksen

[hawkinthesnow]

I don't agree with the way Holding has categorised some of the writers he lists. I find his categories some what artifical. For example he has under the category of "Jesus the Saviour" the names of Timothy Lule Johnson, NT Wright and Robert Stein. Are we meant to conclude that of those listed, ONLY these three believed that Jesus was the Saviour? Some of those he lists are writing solely as historians, presenting us with what can be known about Jesus solely from historical point of view. Meier, for instance, is an orthodoX Catholic writer who certianly beleives that Jesus is the Saviour. I am not sure about Sanders' theological convictions, but he is writing as a historian, and not as a theologian.

I think one should make a distinction between serious scholars who are trying to locate Jesus in his social milieu, and the more sensational writers who are simply trying to prove a pet theory, people like Freke and Gandy, Wells and Doherty.

[TheistusMaximus]

I don't think he's obligated to make a list of every single proponent of every single theory.

[bjorn]

Agree - this is just an amusing list, to make a point or three.